Nine years after the beginning of the saga, after having beaten all his previous main enemies, Sandaukan is now ready to go for something else entirely: wait for the ghost of Charles the 2nd Spanish Hapsburg to appear in the ship for a big damn party. The facts date back to when the ghost died in his physical human form hundreds of years ago. The hero, together with his brave Mawas and backed by the majorly trusty troops of Bali, returns to Java, ready to face all the dangers (from the charges of cryptids in Java to the terrible ambushes of certain biased Javanese villagers, whose pirates were freaking plenty). However, on his way, there is an unexpected opponent: the Greek adventurer Teotokris, much abused adviser to the autocrat of Bali Sabi, given up for dead in Conquering an Empire and very determined to take revenge on the Mawas, in particular Pau de Gomera. However, Pau's twins will have bondaged the villain to the point of kicking him into the deathly graces of a big damn cliff.